Distributed Role-Play

Role-play games can provide learners with a unique environment for exploring difficult historical or social concepts. These games allow players to better understand the perspectives of others by creating opportunities to make choices and experience consequences in a game world that approximates the everyday world. While the world inside a game is generally safer than the one outside of it, it may not be entirely free from harm. This can be especially true when the game world contains painful or violent narratives. This chapter describes distributed role-play as a game mechanic for learning games designed to facilitate the exploration of difficult social concepts. Using a case study of 40 people playing The Hook Up Game , a game for teaching sexual consent, I show what it looks like to spread the task of role-playing a character across multiple players. Findings from the study suggest that this may mitigate some of the harms associated with traditional role-play while maintaining the experiential learning affordances.